Liz West: Zenith Blue + Primary Red

About

Zenith Blue + Primary Red

Liz West uses multiple fluorescent sticklights to create intense colour blocks flooding the entire space with saturate light. By mixing Primary Red and Zenith Blue coloured light together, West demonstrates colour mixing in practice as the space is flooded with Mauve and Magenta. When the human eye focuses for a duration on either colour block, the complementary colour will be left on our retina as an afterimage when we turn away or close our eyes.

West creates vivid environments that mix luminous colour and radiant light. Reacting to the architectural space of Arcadecardiff, West has created a site-specific installation work which has transformed the room into an immersive and sensory experience. West aims to provoke a heightened sensory awareness in the viewer through her works. She is interested in exploring how sensory phenomena can invoke psychological and physical responses that tap into our own deeply entrenched relationships to colour. 

West's investigation into the relationship between colour and light is often realised through an engagement between materiality and a given site.  Within physical and architectural space, West uses light as a material that radiates outside of its boundaries and containers. She playfully refracts light through using translucent, transparent or reflective materials, directing the flow of artificial light. Our understanding of colour can only be realised through the presence of light. By playing and adjusting colour, West brings out the intensity and composition of her spatial arrangements. These ephemeral interventions forge new spaces and environments.

Liz West (b.1985) lives and works in Manchester, UK. She graduated from Glasgow School of Art in 2007, with a BA (Hons) degree in Fine Art: Sculpture and Environmental Art. Since then she has exhibited her work both nationally and internationally. Recent exhibitions include: Light Fantastic, National Media Museum (2015), Manchester Science Festival, University of Salford (2015), Assaulting the Asphalt, Airspace Gallery (2014), FOUR, Cornerhouse - now HOME (2013), Chroma, Blankspace Gallery (2012) and The Celeste Art Prize, New York (2011). Liz is currently working on several new exhibitions and commissions including Through No.3 for Spinningfields, Manchester in partnership with Castlefield Gallery and a solo exhibition this Winter at The Willis Museum and Sainsbury Gallery, Basingstoke. Liz will be artist-in-residence at the Building+Light conference in Frankfurt, Germany in March 2016.